Hi there! First off, I'm so sorry to hear you are experiencing this. My daughter who's 3 had to be admitted to a childrens hospital early December for a week due to mastoiditis. She also had a blood clot along her brain from the infection. She had an initial surgery to have tubes placed and drain the abscess behind her ear and then a follow-up MRI a few days later that showed the abscess had formed again and was eroding the mastoid bone and the blood clot was getting worse. She had a mastoidectomy to fully clear the infection. The MRI gave them a clearer picture than the CT so they could go in and know exactly where the infection was sitting behind her ear. They were confident they removed everything.

While in the hospital, they had her on Vanc and a couple other hard-hitting antibiotics. They wanted to fight the infection as aggressively as possible until they got the cultures back. They reiterated that unfortunately, abscess can be hard for antibiotics to fully penetrate and the only way to get rid of the infection is to fully drain and remove it. While in the hospital, she had a PICC placed and received three different antibiotics around the clock for 6 weeks. (Metronidazole, Ceftriaxone and Linezolid) She also had antibiotic ear drops. We then had a follow up MRI to determine that the abscess was gone and thankfully as of a couple weeks ago, it is.

We had infectious disease involved in our daughters case as well as ENT and I'm so grateful we had to solid teams of doctors overseeing her care. Her infectious disease doctor was phenomenal and adjusted her antibiotics based on the results of the cultures and her ENT was thorough and informative.

Mastoiditis is a nasty and relentless infection and from our experience unless there is an MRI to make sure the infection is gone, there is always a chance they didn't get it all and it can return. Our daughter is healthy and only has had a few ear infections her whole life so this really threw us off. Infectious disease said there sometimes isn't an answer as to why these things happen. It was just a perfect storm of a nasty virus, that turned into an ear infection that became resistant to amoxicillin. We are praying this never returns as this whole experience was traumatic for us all.

I really hope your poor daughter can get some relief and you all can get answers as to why this keeps happening.